Chapter Twenty-Four
Afghanistan
Walker adjusted his grip on the wheel, steering the smoothest course he could while constantly checking the rearview mirror to ensure the green Montero was still behind him.
His eyes were on that rearview when Naji hit his shoulder and pointed ahead.
Walker braked and snatched the binoculars from the door pocket.
Ahead, he saw the familiar outline of a Toyota Land Cruiser.
He adjusted the focus through the glare and identified three armed men in mismatched fatigues and scarves, black flags fluttering on a whip antenna at the back of the truck.
The terrain on their left was a rocky embankment, high ground.
To the right was a boulder field that gave way to a wadi beyond.
“Fuck,” Walker said, handing the binoculars to Naji and keying his radio.
“Three MAMs visible,” he transmitted, using the term for military-aged male. “Probably at least one more in the truck. I’d say they are Haqqani Network.”
“How much money do we have left?” Staub asked over the radio.
Walker opened the center console to look at the remaining cash.
“Enough,” he said.
“I hope you’re right.”
“Ask Mr. John how Rina and Fatima are faring,” Naji requested.
Walker keyed his radio. “How are your passengers?”
“All good here,” came the reply.
“They’re good, Naji. We will be across the border soon.”
“You know as well as I do that the border means nothing here.”
“It means something to Pakistan. We’re linking up with a contact my organization has in the Turi tribe. They are fiercely anti-Taliban and anti-Haqqani. They are going to see to your safe passage farther into Pakistan.”
“How do you know they just won’t kill us?”
“We are going to give them ten thousand dollars.”
“Why wouldn’t they just take it and kill us anyway?”
“Because with America leaving, they want to continue to be paid. They will pass us information in exchange for compensation. They don’t want to jeopardize that relationship.”
“And you will leave us with the Turi?”
“I’m sorry, Naji. That’s the best we can do. They shouldn’t be much farther past this checkpoint.”
“It is in the hands of Allah.”
“Chris,” came Staub’s voice over the radio.
“Go.”
“These guys are getting the deal of the century out of our withdrawal. I don’t see why they’d fu—” Cognizant of the child in the back seat, he corrected his language. “I don’t see why they would jeopardize the deal. They want money, not heads.”
Staub made a good point. Why would the men in the truck screw up this truce?
In another week, the Americans would leave everything.
That was the dirty deal the U.S. government had made with the Taliban.
The soon-to-be-rulers of Afghanistan were getting what they’d always wanted, foreigners out and a modern army’s abandoned equipment.
The old Tali-Bar at the Ariana Hotel would probably be their cabinet room again in a matter of weeks.
Walker wanted to believe it. The simple fact was, they had already moved through one checkpoint and had been spotted by this one.
“Good copy. Let’s buy our way through,” Walker replied.
He turned to Naji’s daughter in the back seat. Her eyes were wide, not with fright but with wonder.
The vehicles continued forward.
They rolled to a halt and switched off their engines.
The checkpoint ahead was a bleak reminder of what America had accomplished in its twenty-year war: rusted oil barrels, a pile of yellow plastic water jugs, a makeshift gate of strung barbed wire, and three men with AKMs across their knees on the open tailgate of the Cruiser.
“These men look different than the last ones,” Naji said. “They have the look of the devil. Let me come with you.”
“No. Stay here with Zahra.”
“I am a rug salesman. We have a reputation for a reason,” he said. “This close to Pakistan they might speak Urdu. How’s your Urdu?”
“Shit.”
Naji turned to smile at his daughter. “I’ll be right back, dear child,” he said, switching to Pashto. He kissed his hand and leaned back to place it against her forehead.
“Okay,” Walker consented. “You have your papers?”
“Yes.”
Walker stepped out slowly, hands raised with the white pillowcase filled with cash in one.
These were fighters, not opportunists like the last checkpoint.
Walker’s gift was therefore a few thousand dollars more.
Naji followed, his steps cautious. He was ready to translate, to warm them up just like he had learned to do with customers in his shop. He forced a smile.
The leader of the group was a squat, thick-waisted man with a cheek distorted by an old wound. He hopped off the tailgate and stepped forward, muttering something in guttural Urdu.
“Border tax,” Naji translated, voice tight, nodding and smiling.
Border. That was good news.
“Does he want to see your exit papers?”
Naji said something else in Urdu, his tone almost playful, his smile broad.
The thick man barked something back, indistinguishable to the American.
“No, he just wants to know how much money we have.”
“Tell him I can show him.”
Naji spoke again and the leader stepped forward holding out his hand.
“Give him the money,” Naji said.
Walker very deliberately reached into the pillowcase and handed over the cash, keeping his eyes low, his posture respectful.
Naji and the leader exchanged a few clipped words in Urdu as the man ran his fingers through the bills. Naji’s smile never wavered.
The man said something else, short and clipped.
“He said we can go,” Naji said.
The man jerked his head in a reluctant nod.
“Back away slowly,” Walker said.
Naji pressed his palms together in a slight bow, then began stepping back toward the vehicles.
When they were twenty yards from the truck, eyes still on the gatekeepers, high-pitched static pierced the air.
The radio on the leader’s hip crackled to life, barking something urgent in a dialect Walker didn’t recognize. The leader’s face changed. His eyes sharpened, his mouth tightened, the wound near his nose twisted. Naji froze.
“They know who I am. They’re looking for me,” he whispered, voice hollow.
“What are they saying?”
The voice on the radio was shrill and tense.
“The radio! They are going to kill us!”
One of the men on the tailgate raised his AKM.
Walker’s hand flew to the Glock, indexed the grip, cleared leather, and fired three times at the AKM-armed man on the tailgate.
All struck center mass. He pivoted and went for the second target, who was now scrambling from the rear of the truck, fumbling with his weapon.
Walker fired again, hitting the man in his chest, neck, and head.
“Get down!” Walker screamed at Naji.
The leader had moved to the far side of the truck with surprising quickness, stuffing the cash in his tunic while shouting orders in Urdu.
A driver opened the door, stepped out, and raised a Kalashnikov.
Walker crouched and fired as Staub’s rifle erupted behind them, sending rounds through the Land Cruiser’s window and door, shattering the glass and punching through the thin steel, taking the man in his stomach and chest. He fell to the ground in a heap. Walker finished him with a head shot.
“Move!” Staub yelled from the rear vehicle.
Walker grabbed Naji by the arm and hauled him to his feet as Staub’s rounds tore through the Land Cruiser. The leader tried to run up an embankment behind it, but took six rounds of 5.56 in his back. He continued to claw his way up as two more of Staub’s rounds caught him in the head.
Walker could hear the voice on the radio and didn’t need to speak Urdu to understand what was being said, but there was no one left to answer.
He heard the Montero approach, engine racing.
“Naji, let’s get to the truck,” Walker urged.
Naji stumbled and fell. Walker was hauling him to his feet when the unmistakable shriek of an RPG ripped through the air overhead.
The rocket-propelled grenade nicked the top of the Mitsubishi’s roof like a stone skipping on a pond, then slammed into a boulder on the far side of the road, detonating on impact.
Where the fuck did that come from?
Gripping Naji’s arm, Walker yanked him toward their vehicle. They had to get off the X. They had to move. Hitting a moving target was much more difficult than a stationary one.
“Go, go!” Walker yelled at Staub as he passed in front of the approaching Montero, catching Rina’s eyes behind the burqa as she looked past him to her stranded daughter in the Hilux, the eyes a mix of terror and rage.
Get to the truck. Get to my rifle.
The sound of the second RPG was more sickening than the first. It came from the outcropping above them. It had targeted the Hilux, the truck with Zahra inside.
Walker was only two steps into his sprint when the RPG hit.
The warhead impacted just in front of the driver’s-side door and detonated with an intense flash followed by an instantaneous plume of black smoke that engulfed the front portion of the vehicle, the shock wave and rapid combustion of gases throwing the hood skyward.
Zahra.
Walker turned and dropped to a knee. He caught sight of movement in the rocks above and returned fire with the pistol.
The slide locked to the rear as he heard Staub’s rifle pick up cover from just outside the SUV.
He pulled the Glock into his workspace and pressed the magazine release with his thumb, stripping the magazine.
His hand continued to the pouch on the left side of his belt, grabbing a full one and slamming it home.
He then pulled back on the slide to release it and chamber a round.
Get to Zahra.
He heard Naji scream his daughter’s name as the older man scrambled to his feet and stumbled toward the wreckage. Walker saw movement from the back side of his truck. Zahra had escaped the vehicle and was running toward her father.
There is a distinct difference between the sound of an AK-type rifle and the larger-caliber PKM belt-fed machine gun.
It was the man behind the general-purpose machine gun who took Naji’s life.
The first rounds fell short, eating into the hard-packed dirt between Walker and his source, then adjusted.
The first round caught Naji in the leg when he was mere feet from his daughter.
As Walker ran, he watched Naji stumble, the projectiles taking him in the hip and lower back and working their way up the right side of his spine, neck, and finally his head.
He was dead before he crashed atop his young daughter.
Staub’s rifle picked up again, sending rounds up at their assailants, providing cover fire as Walker slid to a stop in the dirt and rolled the rug salesman over.
Zahra was still, and for a moment Walker thought she was dead too. There was blood trickling out of one ear and her face was dirty and dark from the explosion. Her eyes blinked. She was in shock.
Walker threw his hands under her neck and legs, scooping her from the ground and sprinting to Staub’s vehicle as his partner continued to send rounds into enemy positions in the rocks above.
He threw open the right rear door and pushed Zahra in with her sister, jumping in after her.
“Go! Go! Go!” he yelled over Staub’s gunfire and Rina’s screams.
Staub ducked back into the vehicle and slammed the door, then threw it into drive and smashed his foot on the accelerator. As the SUV surged forward, he looked back at Walker and past him at the crumpled figure in the road.
“Fuck!”
He turned back to the obstacle ahead, yelling, “Hold on,” and crashed the vehicle through the makeshift barbed-wire gate.
The vehicle ripped the gate off a wood pole on one side where it was haphazardly attached and pulled the other pole directly from the ground.
The barbed wire wrapped around the front grille of the SUV as it careened down the road, gunfire continuing to erupt behind them.
Walker threw his body over the kids in the back and felt a round impact his rear plate, just as the SUV careened around a bend, putting them out of their enemy’s line of sight.
“We’re clear,” Staub shouted.
Rina continued screaming and moaning in Pashto, reaching back to her daughters, whom Walker was checking for gunshot wounds.
“Kids are okay!” Walker shouted over Rina’s screams as the car bounced over ruts in the unpaved road.
“Give me your rifle,” Walker said.
Staub slipped the sling over his head and handed it back. Walker performed a tac reload to top it off.
Neither of them noticed the plastic yellow water jugs camouflaged on the roadside.